


Birds of Jedha

by seaofolives



Series: Baze & Chirrut Spring Collection [1]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Timeline, Childhood, Childhood Friends, Childhood Sweethearts, Draw Me Like One of Your French Girls, Headcanon, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, POV Baze Malbus, Pre-Canon, Pre-Movie(s), Pre-Rogue One, Puppy Love, Young Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-11-03 07:22:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10962465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seaofolives/pseuds/seaofolives
Summary: Baze Malbus had just turned six when Chirrut Imwe first catches him with a piece of parchment and a stick of charcoal.





	Birds of Jedha

**Author's Note:**

> A whole fic for a headcanon where if Baze is skilled with mechanical modifications which may require blueprints, then he must have some skills with art. Written for the prompt _birds_ to be collated in a series of spring prompts called the _Baze & Chirrut Spring Collection_.

Baze Malbus had just turned six when Chirrut Imwe first catches him with a piece of parchment and a stick of charcoal. 

“It’s a gift from Elder Eili’i,” Baze boasts, hardly glancing over his shoulder where Chirrut stands bent over to watch. He is busy drawing strokes and then running over them with a light finger, already gray from the effort. 

“I don’t mean that,” Chirrut corrects him. “I mean _that_ , what is that thing that you’re drawing?”

Baze turns to him once, then looks at his work again. “Oh this?” he begins. It serves as an invitation for Chirrut to fly to his side. Baze moves across the bench to give him space, displacing the fallen blossoms from the weeping tree overhead. He sidles closer. “It’s a lightbow.”

“A lightbow?” Chirrut squints closer at the gray machine drawn at an angle. It resembles less what he knows of the Guardians’ weapon and more a mechanized flower with four slender petals drawing a cross, perhaps attached to the weapon itself. “But it doesn’t look like a lightbow!”

“That is because it’s _my_ lightbow, Chirrut,” Baze explains, smirking proudly. “This is what I will complete once I’ve attained my seventh duan. Look here, this is an improvement.” He points a blackened finger to a gem perched atop the north-pointing arrow. “This is a scoping mechanism. It will help me mark my targets even from a hundred miles away.”

Chirrut peers more closely at the detail. When he sits back, he is shaking his head. Baze first thinks it is in awe, but he realizes soon enough that it is not so much in awe as it is in disbelief. “The Elders will never let you build this, Baze.”

“Who’s to say?” Baze is a bit stung for his friend’s lack of faith, frowning at Chirrut’s doubtful face. “By the time I will have achieved seventh duan, the technology will have improved greatly.” He sweeps his hand over his lightbow’s design. “This will not be impossible to make!”

“ _If_ the Elders will allow you,” Chirrut reminds him. He shakes his head. “It will never get off the paper. It’s too different!”

“The Jedi Knights are allowed their own variations with the lightsaber. Why not the Guardians!”

“There are too many problems,” Chirrut explains. “How will you pack this? How will you conceal this? How about the charging system? The capacity? The weight, the balance? The lightbow of the Guardians is a perfected design, it works as it is.”

“But it could be better,” Baze insists stubbornly, speaking slowly. Discouraged by Chirrut’s criticism, he returns to his perfect lightbow with a frown. “I will answer your questions once I’ve done the maths. I will cross the bridge when I get there.” He falls silent after. 

The tension becomes palpable, and Chirrut shifts uneasily. “For what it’s worth,” he begins softly, “I hope that you do.”

Baze’s heart is in his throat when he whips his head to Chirrut smiling shyly. “Really?” he asks, spirit rising. 

Chirrut nods timidly. “It’s a beautiful lightbow. I did not know you knew how to draw!”

Baze blushes at the compliment he has been waiting for. He tries to hide it by looking at his artwork again. “I don’t,” he says. “It is simply that…sometimes, I like to do it. I like looking at ships, speeders and blasters. I like the little notches they have, or the parts that slide and click to make things work, so they are the ones that I draw. Ormitt is much better than I.”

“Ormitt is great at copying, not creating,” Chirrut revises his observation kindly. “It’s a skill and one that deserves envy but so does yours. You created something out of nothing! How did you even come up with the idea?”

Baze’s heart is full now. His ears are burning when he turns to grin at Chirrut but he answers disappointingly. “Nothing really,” he says. 

One heartbeat later, he makes up for it with an excited question for Chirrut: “Do you want me to draw you a lightbow, too?”

“You will do it?”

Baze nods happily. 

Chirrut scoots closer still as Baze rolls the parchment of his lightbow carefully and replaces it with a fresh one, clipping it to the portable drawing desk he had assembled for himself. “What do you want it to look like?” Baze asks, drawing the starting lines of the new lightbow in quick, decisive strokes. 

“Mmm…” Chirrut taps his chin, eyes up on the clear skies of Jedha, but he does not take long to make his decision. “I want it to look like a bird!”

“Okay,” Baze says, tapping one end of his drawing stick at the corner of his desk as he considers Chirrut’s request. “So first, there must be wings…” He bends over and puts charcoal to parchment.

❖

“You really haven’t got any more seeds over there, Chirrut?”

Not for the first, and perhaps not for the last time either, Chirrut sighs and stares at the young teen’s hunched form. “I keep telling you, Baze, it will be of little use. The birds haven’t yet finished their feed, adding more will not make them stay any longer.”

Baze only clicks his tongue in response, nose to paper, scratching away with a finger of graphite in furious motions. He sits with crossed legs on the dirt as between him and Chirrut, three birds of shining tawny plume hop about a bed of feeds, chirping merrily. They flex their wings, and peck away, tilting their stout heads upwards to swallow. 

It ends with a snap, and even Baze is startled to see that it came from him. He looks at his broken granite stick in confusion. A beat later, he is ducking his head when the birds zip past him, heading skyward. When he looks again, all that is left are the seeds and Chirrut Imwe. 

He snarls in frustration, throwing the stub of granite to the earth and then the unfinished artwork after it. “I didn’t finish it,” he sulks, crossing his arms. “I was too slow.”

Chirrut shifts closer to the paper, bends low to peer at the gray shapes, at the flying strokes that somehow congregate together to draw one picture. It looks more like a sketch and less like a finished piece, weightless without shadows defined, and it is that that gets Baze Malbus. 

“Better to draw machines, and even places. At least they don’t move.”

“But I like it,” Chirrut protests gently, picking up the parchment to bring it nearer his eyes that squint to focus. “I think it is beautiful.”

“You are only saying that to make me feel better, Chirrut,” Baze sighs heavily. Not for the first time, and definitely not for the last time, he doubts himself as he looks at his hands, sooted with gray stuff. “My hands are just too big for drawing moving life. They are better suited for the ones that stay still. So I can take my time.”

“You won’t even ask me why I like it?”

Baze looks up to the boy still looking at his artwork. He thinks he hears just the slightest note of exasperation in his voice, and wonders if it is because it was Chirrut who insisted that Baze try his skills on the living, and it _was_ only for Chirrut that he does. 

“I think I like it,” Chirrut finally begins when he knows he has Baze’s full attention, “because it is fleeting. I cannot pray for the birds to linger no more than the Force can, and it is that that makes this moment you have captured beautiful and rare.” He looks up to Baze with one hand on the paper. “This was the moment where the Force has brought us altogether. You,” he sweeps his hand at the feeds, “the birds,” his hand perches lightly on his chest, “and me. All of us bonded by the Force.”

Hearing Chirrut speak of his work like that, Baze almost feels ready to accept it like a child. _His_ child. The one he has broken his back, his very own rules for, as only a parent would.

Chirrut looks at the drawing one more time before he starts to roll it up. Baze is surprised when he reaches for it but does not receive it from Chirrut when he rises. “Hey! Where are you going with it?”

The younger boy turns to him with a raised brow. “You say you don’t like it, but I do. So I’m keeping it.”

“ _Keeping_ it? But that’s mine!” Baze makes to snatch for it as he flies to his feet but Chirrut steps back and holds the drawing away. “Chirrut!”

“You threw it away!”

“I did not. Give it back!”

He chases Chirrut around the garden, put to work for the drawing which he has made with his very own hands. But laughing, they soon forget the point of the game as they bring it inside the Temple, their footfalls and glee echoing high and sharp in the hollow space of the corridor.

❖

“Chirrut! _Chirruuuuut!!_ ”

He catches the young man on the steps of a lecture room for the youngest Disciples of the Whills, legs crossed, his profile facing out to the hallway and the windows and the splashing sunlight. A pair of headphones covers his ears, and between his knees is a datapad on which his patient hands rest. Doubtless it is only his keen sense of his surroundings that draws him to his stumbling form, his arms flailing as his sandals squeak against the polished floorboards and he almost kisses the varnish. 

“Baze?!” Chirrut calls back to him, removing his headphones to wear around his neck but he does not rise to steady his friend. He knows Baze is coming faster, holds himself in rapt attention waiting for his approach. 

Baze slides the rest of the way on his knees. He is grinning until even his ears hurt, even when Chirrut’s milky blue eyes miss his shoulders by inches and he does not smile instantly. He takes his time to reorient himself to Baze’s nearness, before he finally grins himself. 

“I sense you are bursting with good news, Baze Malbus. What is it?”

Baze responds by removing his headphones and setting aside the datapad he was listening to. In its place, he shoves a slab of wood only slightly bigger than the former device, and he practically dumps Chirrut’s hands right onto its carved face. His fingers are frozen first in confusion. 

But he regains himself and finally explores the swoops and flats, seeking a starting point. He looks down to the round thing as if he could actually see it—and he breathes. Deeply, as he would if he were seeking the Force around them, to feel, truly _feel_ the piece of wood that he held. 

Among Guardians, patience is a much-loved virtue—but Baze Malbus had never been known for his patience. Full of pride, he finally decides to speak up. “I’ve done it,” he boasts breathlessly. 

Chirrut smiles toothily, tracing the boundaries and then again the characters within. “You’ve done it,” he repeats after Baze to agree. “The three birds, your drawing from when we were young, you’ve finished carving them into wood!”

“Yes!”

“I knew it, Baze,” Chirrut laughs. “I told you you could do it! If you just put your heart and your mind to it, you’ll be able to do it. And you did!”

“And it’s all because of you, Chirrut Imwe!” Baze reaches for his jaw and raises himself, high enough to subject Chirrut to a big, sloppy kiss. He pulls back too late, beaming shyly, looking as if he wants to hide behind raised shoulders. Baze laughs. His hands slide down to the column of his neck to hold him tenderly when he tells him, “I would not have been capable of this had it not been for you.”

Chirrut is still grinning at Baze when his hands remember to navigate the wooden face, its hills and valleys that make up the three birds. 

“Will you give this to me?” he asks. 

“Of course,” Baze says without a morsel of hesitation. He nods to prove his point. “I learned how to carve wood because of you. So you can see my drawings even without your eyes.”

“Can you make me something else if I asked of it?”

Baze shakes his head. “Anything for you, Chirrut. _Anything._ ”

He does not take long to decide what he wants next: “A necklace. With a starbird for its pendant.”

“Done,” Baze says decisively. “Consider it done, Chirrut.”

Chirrut thanks him. He pulls his hand away from the carving to find Baze and draw him in for another kiss. He puts it back to Baze’s piece of work while the creator finally finds his place next to him so they can look at his old drawing together.

❖

One by one, he lays out his tools beside him neatly and by size: pencils, charcoal, blade for sharpening, different types of erasers. He smooths the crisp parchment and makes sure each corner is weighted down properly just as his door slides open.

He does not have to turn to see who it is who comes in, but when he does, he is glad altogether for his visitor. Chirrut Imwe is still dressed in his Guardian robes, even though he already smells of soap and flowers. He does not wait to reacquaint himself to Baze’s bedroom and immediately makes for the bed across its owner. 

“Did anybody see you?” Baze asks, still sat behind his writing table. 

“No one,” Chirrut says as he pulls his belt free, and starts to strip. There is no hesitation in his movements, each hand retracing a well-known path that will remove one more layer of fabric after another. 

This is not the first time Baze watches the process, neither is it the first time Baze feels his heart pounding in his chest. The first was quite appropriately the first time he and Chirrut had made love, when they were still young men both. The second time would be this. 

He is not yet done preparing his tools, _himself_ —or so he thinks. Whatever is the case, he knows he cannot move as he counts down the number of discarded clothing, tries many times but fails. He makes several attempts to regain his breathing and remember his lessons but his body, simply put, has ceased to obey him. Now his hand hangs in mid-air, and his lips are parted like an unfortunate slackard as Chirrut peels slowly the last piece of garment from his broad shoulders. He drops his arms, and lets it slide off freely to the floor. 

Now he stands naked—he shucks even his thin pair of sandals—except for a black cord worn around his neck with a gold pendant of a starbird in the middle of his chest bone. Baze knows it like he knows the shape of his hands—it is his design, and partly his creation as he had asked for help from a former abbot in making it in metal. Baze feels nasty and treacherous when his eyes travel to Chirrut’s strong chest, his taut nipples, the slight curve of his waist, the shape of his thighs…and because he must, because his desire compels him, the length of flesh dangling between them. 

It does not occur to him instantly that Chirrut is doing this on purpose. When he finally does, it is only because of what Chirrut said: “It is known that the art of zama-shiwo allows a practitioner full mastery of their bodies. With proper application, we can control our own heart rate, our own blood and even our own breathing. But I never realized that I have come to a point in my own growth that I can also control someone else’s breathing.”

That would be him, Baze knows. He snaps out of his reverie and glares at the smirking Chirrut. 

“Do you like what you see?”

“You know what I think about what I see,” Baze groans, all but snatching a pencil to mark the lower right corner of the parchment with a date. 

“It is just a vessel,” Chirrut dismisses the answer that he asked for, waving it away like a fly in the air as he finds his place on the bed. “It matters not to the Force how it appears nor what it can do.”

“If I do not know any better, you are only doing this to annoy me again,” he almost growls. Baze is frustrated, in more ways than one, and Chirrut isn’t helping by being as elusive as the Force itself, one second asking one thing and then refusing it the next. “Are you sure you are ready for this?” It finally occurs to him to ask. 

“I am,” Chirrut answers with an unwavering voice as he lies down. “But I cannot say the same about you.”

Baze grunts and frowns, but it is clear to him now what the both of them are: nervous. This is more difficult than the act of making love, when all that they care for is the pleasure of the flesh, the union of two bodies and their interconnectedness to the Force around them. Chirrut has laid himself bare, defenseless, if Chirrut could ever be such a thing, for Baze with the utmost trust that he will respect this vessel, no matter what the Force thinks of it. And Baze must ensure Chirrut that this trust is placed in the best hands. 

Chirrut settles himself on his pillow and his bed, crooking one arm under his head, folding the bottom leg to look comfortable, then turning slightly so that he is not completely on his side and Baze can see more of his tummy. Baze almost forgets how to breathe again. Chirrut’s pendant catches the light of the golden lamp on his nightstand. 

“Put your other hand on the side of your hip so I can see it,” is all that Baze says before he puts his eyes down to the paper and starts with the initial lines. But Chirrut tells him to wait. 

When he looks up, he sees Chirrut reaching for his nightstand with his other hand and pushing the release on the top drawer. He rummages briefly inside and comes away with a bottle that is all too familiar to the both of them: it has a narrow top with a simple swirling cut for a design, sloping out to a slightly less narrower bottom, half full with clear liquid. Chirrut flips the cap open with a clear _pop!_ and pours a generous amount of its content to his hand. 

He sets the bottle aside, and the smell of honey, almond and other fragrances waft out of the open lip. Baze watches Chirrut take his length with his oiled hand—and stroke it. The sound it makes fills the quiet room, the vacuous tension. Steals his entire being. Baze feels his blood rising up to his face and building up between his legs. The room is stifling. His mouth feels dry like sand and his throat is parched. 

Chirrut settles into his pose again, but keeps hold of his damp length this time. 

They say nothing more. With a deep breath, Baze returns to his canvas and begins to form Chirrut in it with the use of his pencils and charcoal. The night is quiet save for the bells of the Temple and the scratch of graphite on paper. It does not take long for Baze to forget about his physical wants, drawn to the perfection of Chirrut’s form and the task of copying it exactly using only his imperfect hands and meager tools. Chirrut lies absolutely still, with only the softest rising and falling of his chest, a true man of zama-shiwo. Time and again, though, he catches him stroking his oiled length again—and it is in these moments when Baze takes a quick break. 

He finishes the replica after what seems like a decade—and all at once, after he signs the picture, he feels the fatigue settling in his bones, weighing down heavily on him. Baze looks out his window and sees that the night is all dark. He looks at Chirrut. 

The man is still awake, at peace with himself, although his blind eyes look far-off. 

Baze sets aside his pencil and stands. Against his better judgment, he rinses his hands in the wash basin next to him, and starts to strip. 

Chirrut stirs only when the last piece of his clothing hits the floor with a susurrus. “Baze?” he beckons quietly to the darkness as the man pads towards him.

He falls back to the bed and stares upwards as Baze pins him gently with his mass—but he waits. He studies the surprise on Chirrut’s face, carries himself on his elbows to give Chirrut’s arms enough space to move. He waits as patiently as a man of the Force but he is tired. He wants the comfort and the warmth of Chirrut’s embrace, his scent next to him as he sleeps. 

Chirrut smiles, and the weariness fades from Baze Malbus, almost turns his bones to sand. The blind man reaches up to trace his face, the outline of his shoulders. “So is this payment?” he asks softly. “How much do you charge for the commission?”

Baze chuckles. He smiles so that when Chirrut’s thumb finds his lips, he knows he is smiling. 

“Very well, I accept the price,” Chirrut whispers, as if Baze had opened the negotiations. He raises himself, using Baze’s shoulders for leverage and says to his ear, “And I will gladly pay double.” That makes him shiver.

How can he not desire this man? The Force may not care for his charms but he does—they are the galaxy to him. There is nothing that can stop Baze’s lips from finding the crook of Chirrut’s neck after their little “deal” is agreed upon. A mysterious path takes him home to Chirrut’s lips for a long kiss while he settles the fullness of his weight on his lover and searches for his wrists to trap. Chirrut thrusts his pelvis upwards to him and they both moan in agreement. Baze holds both Chirrut’s hands up over his head with only one of his while the other steals downwards to find Chirrut’s ready sex. 

But Chirrut jolts and tears himself free of Baze’s lips. Baze flies upwards as if electrified, hands up over his shoulders where the blind man might have seen them if he could, even before Chirrut gasps, “Wait, Baze, wait!”

“I’m sorry,” Baze sputters. “I’m sorry!”

“No, fool!” Chirrut points to the direction of his nightstand. “The light, douse the light. It can be seen from the window. If anyone catches us with it this late, there will be questions to be asked.”

“Oh!” Baze complies quickly, stumbling. The room falls into complete darkness as he hurries back to the bed while Chirrut removes his necklace and sets it beside the open bottle. Baze lowers himself but Chirrut catches him by his shoulders, and somehow, manages to tangle his legs with his own. 

Suddenly, Baze’s back is on the bed and Chirrut is straddling him, a cat-like grin on his face. He sighs blissfully and relaxes when Chirrut reaches for the bottle of oil, and spreads his legs wider when Chirrut gropes for his throbbing flesh to hold it skin to skin with his own. He grunts. 

Another one follows another after the next, with his sighs and his groans while Chirrut lathers them both with the oil and his other hand steals between them, probing for Baze’s opening. Soon enough, he is bucking his hips and singing his lover’s name in a private hymn as Chirrut slips inside him and starts to rock.

❖

He begins, as always, with the top-left corner of the frame. From there, he makes his way slowly towards the right, careful hands working in pairs, quiet even as they slide upon wood lest a detail be missed. Baze almost feels the back of his throat grow a rock as he tries to swallow and fails miserably, tries to breathe but forgets how.

Lips parted slightly, Chirrut stares up ahead, immersed in the concentration of a critic. From the left to the right, he finally catches he first rise on an otherwise flat surface, and he smiles slightly. His hands move slower still, following the contours of a man lying down on his bed, an arm and a leg folded, gazing down to watch his hand stroke his member. He has a necklace with a pendant that is shaped like a starbird. 

When his fingers brush upon the man’s sex, Chirrut’s smile widens and he ducks his head. He is blushing, Baze realizes, and he feels like blushing with him in something like sympathy. 

Chirrut turns slightly towards Baze, exploring still. “It’s too small,” he tells him.

Baze almost chokes at that criticism, but it relaxes him. In the privacy of his quarters, neither man had any need for modesty. “Small?” he repeats. “I had to make it bigger!” He laughs when Chirrut slaps his bicep. Baze rubs the sting away, grinning still. 

Chirrut is also smirking but says nothing more. He keeps on, smoothing over his flat belly, the shape of his face, his skull…

He is quiet again so Baze moves closer to him. Chirrut is inspecting the starbird pendant when he finally asks, “So what do you think?”

Chirrut smiles at him again. “It is very flattering,” he admits. “Now I know how you see me. I do not know where you get this much admiration for me.”

“Is that even a question?” Baze answers anyway by reaching for one of Chirrut’s hand. “Shall I give you the long of it or the short of it?”

Chirrut only shakes his head, aware of Baze’s subtle proposition. 

“So do you like it?” Baze asks, breathless. 

Chirrut nods, and Baze feels the rock in his throat melting with his heart. “It is very beautiful. Thank you, Baze.” He pauses only slightly before he asks, “Can I keep it?”

“Of course,” Baze assures him. 

“What do you call it?” Chirrut asks again, now grinning at his newest acquisition. His hands move over the carving of himself again. 

Baze shrugs. “I haven’t really given it much thought. _One Night at the Temple_? _A Portrait of a Man Pleasuring Himself_?”

Chirrut considers these titles briefly before he shakes his head. 

“You got something better?”

Chirrut nods. “ _Waiting_ ,” he tells him. 

_Waiting._ Baze likes it. He thinks of the word and he remembers Chirrut sliding his hand up and down his length, like a man waiting for his lover to arrive for a night of pleasure. He tells Chirrut as much by carrying his chin slightly towards him so that they can kiss. Chirrut finally abandons his gift to frame Baze’s face and pull him closer still. 

They part shortly after, but before the passion grows cold, Baze asks him quickly, “Can I take you tonight?” He does not whisper it so much as he hisses it, and it embarrasses him to sound so desperate. So hungry for the quivers of Chirrut’s hips, the softness of his whimpers and the taste of his tears when he is full of ecstasy but they must be quiet. 

Chirrut only smiles at his request and meets him in another tender kiss. When Baze feels his tongue slipping past their teeth and their lips, he knows that the answer is a resounding _yes_.

❖

Before he leaves, he tilts the rugged, flaking food pouch onto his waiting palm and gives it a couple of tiny shakes. Bit by bit, the credits slide out, and he spreads them out with another shake, this time from his hand and some motions from his thumb. He counts them out quickly, in one look, nods and closes his fingers around them. It isn’t much—which is to say that if they were prudent enough, they would be able to stretch the money out to a week at most but knowing Chirrut, half of it will likely go to those who have more needs unmet—but he is happy enough with the thought of a warm meal in his belly tonight. “Until next time,” he says, tipping the credits back to the battered pouch.

“If the Force wills it, there’ll be another,” the Bimm replies, waving at the big man. “Until then, Baze Malbus.”

Baze only grunts. He tucks the battered pouch into one of the many pockets under his tunic and starts the long journey back to the Old Market across the Holy City. It is morning by the time he and a small crew of six had arrived back at NiJedha on a speeder full of crates of natural clay and whichever unlucky worm species was caught wriggling within, later to be cut up and served in an unappetizing stew for the desperate. It was quick money and an easy one at that—the Bimm needed a protector in case there were any hungry predators prowling about while she and her men dug up the clay and packed them. Such a task would normally not be in any danger of a wild animal far away from its natural habitat to require the specialties of a Morellian 35c repeater cannon. 

But the days have hardly been normal for a long time now. Not since the Empire’s shadows fell over the Holy City. 

It is in everywhere he goes—in the crumbling walls of an old temple, the scrape of a robotic leg way past its maintenance, the march and crackle of stormtroopers in white, their very presence pushing him into the mouth of an alley full of refuse to wait them out. 

He hears it in the wails of a child crouching on the dirt, surrounded by the ignorance of a city that wants nothing to do with charity. Baze’s heart stops as he takes a step out of his hiding place, one heartbeat closer to taking the poor girl in his arms. 

But he catches himself just when a woman tears free from the side of the road and scoops the child up, voice equal parts frantic and angry. The little girl cries harder as she clings to the woman’s neck, burying her tear-streaked face on her layers of scarves. 

They leave, ignoring Baze who watches them from the back, and who despite himself heaves a sigh of relief. The girl is not an orphan, not yet. He does not have to see the sadness on Chirrut’s smile for her. At least not yet. 

He makes his way back to the city, falling in step with a crowd and then breaking free to find another. He navigates the veins of his home without breaking stride, except to look in on an old woman he and Chirrut had met in unfortunate circumstances. She’d broken her leg when a stormtrooper had shoved past her and had been bedridden since. 

Now he catches her watching the city from under the tarp of her daughter’s shop, looking tall and important on an old high-backed chair. They exchange a few kind words for which he receives two overripe fruits. He slips in a couple of credits to her daughter’s hands for her medicine, then takes his leave before the old woman notices and badgers him to take them back. 

It isn’t long after that he reaches the Old Market—and the litany of a faithful him. He picks it out easily in the din of haggling, arguing, hollering locals and tourists, or what little there were left. It is a noisy place and a tight one, made worse by the hundreds of languages passing between tongues, as if the very sound of them occupies physical space. 

On and on, the chant goes. He follows it, one hand on his pouch, stepping carefully against the flow of the crowd. “May the Force of others be with you,” it prays. “May the Force of others be with you!”

He catches a Twi’lek blocking his path to toss a few knots to the praying man’s alms bowl, then kneels slightly when a hand reaches up to the top of his lekku. The chant falls silent for a moment. 

When the Twi’lek leaves, the blind man with the alms bowl is smiling like a star. Baze almost rolls his eyes at his delight. 

“May the Force of others be with you,” Chirrut continues. “Trade that contraband for a glimpse into your future!”

Baze is certain he does not need to give up his cannon to know what his future looks like. It’s a conclusion he arrives at with a weary sigh as he finally reaches the last surviving Guardian of the Whills in his post. 

“You really have to say it out loud?” he asks, finding a place beside the beggar, watching the market swell and shift across of them. His hand is under his tunic, going over his pockets one after another. 

“It’s not a secret,” Chirrut tells him with a frustrating toothy smile, facing his way. “You _are_ a walking contraband. Even a blind man can see it.” Baze grunts. His grin widens. “So what have you brought me?”

“There are no souvenirs where I went last night.”

“You say there are no souvenirs,” Chirrut repeats him. “What I hear is that you did not try hard enough.”

“I got some fruits from the old lady we met near the Square of Stars.”

“Oh?” Chirrut nods, pleased by the news. “It will be nice to have some again with tea.”

Finally, Baze extracts his hand from within his tunic and reaches for the alms bowl in Chirrut’s to take it. He replaces it with a bundle wrapped in rough canvas which he leaves Chirrut to discover for himself. Eager, but careful fingers undo the string and peel open the gift. 

Chirrut’s smile loosens up, and he laughs softly. His thumbs smooth over the round head, the sharp beak, the small belly, the wide wings and the long tail of the wooden figurine in his fingers. It is the first that Baze had carved and gifted to Chirrut in a while. Since the fall of the Temple, Baze has not been keeping up with his woodwork and his drawings, and when he does, it is only to plot out his modifications on his equipment or anything he might wish to apply to his and Chirrut’s shared room. Often, Chirrut might ask him if he is drawing again when he hears the telltale scratch of pencil on parchment when they could afford it, and often, he will answer yes. But they never speak of what it is he is drawing. 

Now he has given Chirrut a piece of their past, a tiny bird caught in motion in wood forever. “But it is so small! How does it not get blown away every time it takes flight?”

“I reckon that is no longer our problem, Chirrut,” Baze tells him, quirking a brow to his direction. “I saw it while it is still alive. That should mean that it has its ways of solving its own problems.”

“As the Force has given it.” The answer seems to satisfy Chirrut. He is silent for another long minute, intent on committing every crevice and chip he felt to his memory. Turning the figurine over in his hands, he finally says wistfully, “There is so much more of Jedha that I have not seen!” 

“One less,” Baze corrects him, laying one hand across both of Chirrut’s. That one gesture alone is enough to invite smiles and nods from his blind friend, contented by Baze’s assurance. “Have you had breakfast?” he asks him.

“Some tea,” Chirrut tells him. “But only that. Breakfast is decidedly sweeter with companionship.”

“Until you complain that it’s as bland as a tea of sand.” Baze rises anyway even as Chirrut grins. “Well, come. I think I have an idea of what you might be in the mood for.” The pouch with the morning’s take feels pleasantly heavy in his pocket. 

“Oh?” Chirrut sings, looking amused. He tips the contents of the alms bowl to his hand and stows everything away—money, gift—under his robes. Later, one of those will disappear from his pocket into an emptier one and no one would be the wiser. “So early in the day, Baze Malbus! I have missed you, too.”

“Yes,” Baze sighs heavily, eyes rolling. “It _is_ very early in the day, Chirrut.” Chirrut laughs, standing up with him. 

He waits for the man to collect his walking stick before he starts to lead the way back to the heart of the Old Market. They barely take more than five steps into their path when Chirrut already asks Baze about the bird he had seen and carved for him.


End file.
